Success, A Novel

What next?  Banneker put the query to himself with more seriousness than he had hitherto given to estimating the future.  Money, as he told Betty Raleigh, had never concerned him much.  His start at fifteen dollars a week had been more than he expected; and though his one weekly evening of mild sybaritism ate up all his margin, and his successful sartorial experiments consumed his private surplus, he had no cause for worry, since his salary had been shortly increased to twenty, and even more shortly thereafter to twenty-five.  Now it was a poor week in which he did not exceed the hundred.  All of it went, rather more fluently than had the original fifteen.  Frugal though he could be in normal expenditures, the rental of his little but fashionably situated apartment, his new club expenses, his polo outfit, and his occasional associations with the after-theater clique, which centered at The Avon, caused the debit column to mount with astonishing facility.  Furthermore, through his Western associations he had an opportunity to pick up two half-broken polo ponies at bargain prices.  He had practically decided to buy them.  Their keep would be a serious item.  He must have more money.  How to get it?  Harder work was the obvious answer.  Labor had no terrors for Banneker.  Mentally he was a hardened athlete, always in training.  Being wise and self-protective, he did no writing on his day off.  But except for this period of complete relaxation, he gave himself no respite.  Any morning which did not find him writing in his den, after a light, working breakfast, he put in at the Library near by, insatiably reading economics, sociology, politics, science, the more serious magazines, and always the news and comments of the day.  He was possessed of an assertive and sane curiosity to know what was going on in the world, an exigence which pressed upon him like a healthy appetite, the stimulus of his hard-trained mental condition.  The satisfaction of this demand did not pay an immediate return; he obtained little or no actual material to be transmuted into the coin of so-much-per-column, except as he came upon suggestions for editorial use; and, since his earlier experience of The Ledger’s editorial method with contributions (which he considered light-fingered), he had forsworn this medium.  Notwithstanding this, he wrote or sketched out many an editorial which would have astonished, and some which would have benefited, the Inside Room where the presiding genius, malicious and scholarly, dipped his pen alternately into luminous ether and undiluted venom.  Some day, Banneker was sure, he himself was going to say things editorially.

His opinion of the editorial output in general was unflattering.  It seemed to him bound by formalism and incredibly blind to the immense and vivid interest of the news whereby it was surrounded, as if a man, set down in a meadow full of deep and clear springs, should elect to drink from a shallow, torpid, and muddy trickle.  Legislation, taxes, transportation problems, the Greatness of Our City, our National Duty (whatever it might be at the time—­and according to opinion), the drink question, the race problem, labor and capital; these were the reiterated topics, dealt with informatively often, sometimes wittily, seldom impartially.  But, at best, this was but the creaking mechanism of the artificial structure of society, and it was varied only by an occasional literary or artistic sally, or a preachment in the terms of a convinced moralization upon the unvarying text that the wages of sin is death.  Why not a touch of humanism, now and again, thought Banneker, following the inevitable parallels in paper after paper; a ray of light striking through into the life-texture beneath?

By way of experiment he watched the tide of readers, flowing through the newspaper room of the Public Library, to ascertain what they read.  Not one in thirty paid any attention to the editorial pages.  Essaying farther afield, he attended church on several occasions.  His suspicions were confirmed; from the pulpit he heard, addressed to scanty congregations, the same carefully phrased, strictly correct comments, now dealing, however, with the mechanism of another world.  The chief point of difference was that the newspaper editorials were, on the whole, more felicitously worded and more compactly thought out.  Essentially, however, the two ran parallel.

Banneker wondered whether the editorial rostrum, too, was fated to deliver its would-be authoritative message to an audience which threatened to dwindle to the vanishing point.  Who read those carefully wrought columns in The Ledger?  Pot-bellied chair-warmers in clubs; hastening business men appreciative of the daily assurance that stability is the primal and final blessing, discontent the cardinal sin, the extant system perfect and holy, and any change a wile of the forces of destruction—­as if the human race had evoluted by the power of standing still!  For the man in the street they held no message.  No; nor for the woman in the home.  Banneker thought of young Smith of the yacht and the coming millions, with a newspaper waiting to drop into his hands.  He wished he could have that newspaper—­any newspaper, for a year.  He’d make the man in the street sit up and read his editorials.  Yes, and the woman in the home.  Why not the boy and the girl in school, also?  Any writer, really master of his pen, ought to be able to make even a problem in algebra editorially interesting!

And if he could make it interesting, he could make it pay….  But how was he to profit by all this hard work, this conscientious technical training to which he was devoting himself?  True, it was improving his style.  But for the purposes of Ledger reporting, he wrote quite well enough.  Betterment here might be artistically satisfactory; financially it would be fruitless.  Already his space bills were the largest, consistently, on the staff, due chiefly to his indefatigable industry in devoting every spare office hour to writing his “Eban” sketches, now paid at sixteen dollars a column, and Sunday “specials.”  He might push this up a little, but not much.

From the magazine field, expectations were meager in the immediate sense.  True, The Bon Vivant had accepted the story which The Era rejected; but it had paid only seventy-five dollars.  Banneker did not care to go farther on that path.  Aside from the unsatisfactory return, his fastidiousness revolted from being identified with the output of a third-class and flashy publication.  Whatever The Ledger’s shortcomings, it at least stood first in its field.  But was there any future for him there, other than as a conspicuously well-paid reporter?  In spite of the critical situation which his story of the Sippiac riots had brought about, he knew that he was safe as long as he wished to stay.

“You’re too valuable to lose,” said Tommy Burt, swinging his pudgy legs over Banneker’s desk, having finished one of his mirthful stories of a row between a wine agent and a theatrical manager over a doubly reserved table in a conspicuous restaurant.  “Otherwise—­phutt!  But they’ll be very careful what kind of assignments they hand over to your reckless hands in future.  You mustn’t throw expensive and brittle conventions at the editor’s head.  They smash.”

“And the fragments come back and cut.  I know.  But what does it all lead to, Tommy?”

“Depends on which way you’re going.”

“To the top, naturally.”

“From anybody else that would sound blatant, Ban,” returned Tommy admiringly.  “Somehow you get away with it.  Are you as sincere as you act?”

“In so far as my intentions go.  Of course, I may trip up and break myself in two.”

“No.  You’ll always fall light.  There’s a buoyancy about you….  But what about coming to the end of the path and finding nowhere else to proceed?”

“Paragon of wisdom, you have stated the situation.  Now produce the answer.”

“More money?” inquired Tommy.

“More money.  More opportunity.”

“Then you’ve got to aim at the executive end.  Begin by taking a copy-desk.”

“At forty a week?”

“It isn’t so long ago that twenty-five looked pretty big to you, Ban.”

“A couple of centuries ago,” stated Banneker positively.  “Forty a week wouldn’t keep me alive now.”

“You could write a lot of specials.  Or do outside work.”

“Perhaps.  But what would a desk lead to?

“City editor.  Night city editor.  Night editor.  Managing editor at fifteen thou.”

“After ten years.  If one has the patience.  I haven’t.  Besides, what chance would I have?’

“None, with the present lot in the Inside Room.  You’re a heretic.  You’re unsound.  You’ve got dangerous ideas—­accent on the dangerous.  I doubt if they’d even trust you with a blue pencil.  You might inject something radical into a thirty-head.”

“Tommy,” said Banneker, “I’m still new at this game.  What becomes of star reporters?”

“Drink,” replied Tommy brusquely.

“Rats!” retorted Banneker.  “That’s guff.  There aren’t three heavy drinkers in this office.”

“A lot of the best men go that way,” persisted Burt.  “It’s the late hours and the irregular life, I suppose.  Some drift out into other lines.  This office has trained a lot of playwrights and authors and ad-men.”

“But some must stick.”

“They play out early.  The game is too hard.  They get to be hacks. Or permanent desk-men.  D’you know Philander Akely?”

“Who is he?”

“Ask me who he was and I’ll tell you.  He was the brilliant youngster, the coruscating firework, the—­the Banneker of ten years ago.  Come into the den and meet him.”

In one of the inner rooms Banneker was introduced to a fragile, desiccated-looking man languidly engaged in scissoring newspaper after newspaper which he took from a pile and cast upon the floor after operation.  The clippings he filed in envelopes.  A checkerboard lay on the table beside him.

“Do you play draughts, Mr. Banneker?” he asked in a rumbling bass.

“Very little and very poorly.”

The other sighed.  “It is pure logic, in the form of contest.  Far more so than chess, which is merely sustained effort of concentration.  Are you interested in emblemology?”

“I’m afraid I know almost nothing of it,” confessed Banneker.

Akely sighed again, gave Banneker a glance which proclaimed an utter lack of interest, and plunged his shears into the editorial vitals of the Springfield Republican.  Tommy Burt led the surprised Banneker away.

“Dried up, played out, and given a measly thirty-five a week as hopper-feeder for the editorial room,” he announced.  “And he was the star man of his time.”

“That’s pretty rotten treatment for him, then,” said Banneker indignantly.

“Not a bit of it.  He isn’t worth what he gets.  Most offices would have chucked him out on the street.”

“What was his trouble?”

“Nothing in particular.  Just wore his machine out.  Everything going out, nothing coming in.  He spun out enough high-class copy to keep the ordinary reporter going for a life-time; but he spun it out too fast.  Nothing left.  The tragedy of it is that he’s quite happy.”

“Then it isn’t a tragedy at all.”

“Depends on whether you take the Christian or the Buddhist point of view.  He’s found his Nirvana in checker problems and collecting literature about insignia.  Write?  I don’t suppose he’d want to if he could.  ’There but for the grace of God goes’—­you or I. I think the facilis descensus to the gutter is almost preferable.”

“So you’ve shown him to me as a dreadful warning, have you, Tommy?” mused Banneker aloud.

“Get out of it, Ban; get out of it.”

“Why don’t you get out of it yourself?”

“Inertia.  Or cowardice.  And then, I haven’t come to the turning-point yet.  When I do reach it, perhaps it’ll be too late.”

“What do you reckon the turning-point?”

“As long as you feel the excitement of the game,” explained this veteran of thirty, “you’re all right.  That will keep you going; the sense of adventure, of change, of being in the thick of things.  But there’s an underlying monotony, so they tell me:  the monotony of seeing things by glimpses, of never really completing a job, of being inside important things, but never of them.  That gets into your veins like a clogging poison.  Then you’re through.  Quit it, Ban, before it’s too late.”

“No.  I’m not going to quit the game.  It’s my game.  I’m going to beat it.”

“Maybe.  You’ve got the brains.  But I think you’re too stiff in the backbone.  Go-to-hell-if-you-don’t-like-the-way-I-do-it may be all right for a hundred-dollar-a-week job; but it doesn’t get you a managing editorship at fifteen to twenty thousand.  Even if it did, you’d give up the go-to-hell attitude as soon as you landed, for fear it would cost you your job and be too dear a luxury.”

“All right, Mr. Walpole,” laughed Banneker.  “When I find what my price is, I’ll let you know.  Meantime I’ll think over your well-meant advice.”

If the normal way of advancement were closed to him in The Ledger office because of his unsound and rebellious attitude on social and labor questions, there might be better opportunities in other offices, Banneker reflected.

Before taking any step he decided to talk over the general situation with that experienced campaigner, Russell Edmonds.  Him and his diminutive pipe he found at Katie’s, after most of the diners had left.  The veteran nodded when Banneker told him of his having reached what appeared to be a cul-de-sac.

“It’s about time you quit,” said Edmonds vigorously.

“You’ve changed your mind?”

The elder nodded between two spirals of smoke which gave him the appearance of an important godling delivering oracles through incense.  “That was a dam’ bad story you wrote of the Sippiac killings.”

“I didn’t write it.”

“Didn’t uh?  You were there.”

“My story went to the office cat.”

“What was the stuff they printed?  Amalgamated Wire Association?”

“No.  Machine-made rewrite in the office.”

“It wasn’t dishonest.  The Ledger’s too clever for that.  It was unhonest.  You can’t be both neutral and fair on cold-blooded murder.”

“You weren’t precisely neutral in The Courier.”

Edmonds chuckled.  “I did rather put it over on the paper.  But that was easy.  Simply a matter of lining up the facts in logical sequence.”

“Horace Vanney says you’re an anarchist.”

“It’s mutual.  I think he’s one.  To hell with all laws and rights that discommode Me and My interests.  That’s the Vanney platform.”

“He thinks he ought to have advertised.”

“Wise guy!  So he ought.”

“To secure immunity?”

It required six long, hard puffs to elicit from Edmonds the opinion:  “He’d have got it.  Partly.  Not all he paid for.”

“Not from The Ledger,” said Banneker jealously.  “We’re independent in that respect.”

Edmonds laughed.  “You don’t have to bribe your own heeler.  The Ledger believes in Vanney’s kind of anarchism, as in a religion.”

“Could he have bought off The Courier?”

“Nothing as raw as that.  But it’s quite possible that if the Sippiac Mills had been a heavy advertiser, the paper wouldn’t have sent me to the riots.  Some one more sympathetic, maybe.”

“Didn’t they kick on your story?”

“Who?  The mill people?  Howled!”

“But it didn’t get them anything?”

“Didn’t it!  You know how difficult it is to get anything for publication out of old Rockface Enderby.  Well, I had a brilliant idea that this was something he’d talk about.  Law Enforcement stuff, you know.  And he did.  Gave me a hummer of an interview.  Tore the guts out of the mill-owners for violating all sorts of laws, and put it up that the mill-guards were themselves a lawless organization.  There’s nothing timid about Enderby.  Why, we’d have started a controversy that would be going yet.”

“Well, why didn’t you?”

“Interview was killed,” replied Edmonds, grinning ruefully.  “For the best interests of the paper.  That’s what the Vanney crowd’s kick got them.”

“Pop, what do you make of Willis Enderby?”

“Oh, he’s plodding along only a couple of decades behind his time.”

“A reactionary?”

“Didn’t I say he was plodding along?  A reactionary is immovable except in the wrong direction.  Enderby’s a conservative.”

“As a socialist you’re against any one who isn’t as radical as you are.”

“I’m not against Willis Enderby.  I’m for him,” grunted the veteran.

“Why; if he’s a conservative?”

“Oh, as for that, I can bring a long indictment against him.  He’s a firm believer in the capitalistic system.  He’s enslaved to the old economic theories, supply and demand, and all that rubbish from the ruins of ancient Rome.  He believes that gold is the only sound material for pillars of society.  The aristocratic idea is in his bones.”  Edmonds, by a feat of virtuosity, sent a thin, straight column of smoke, as it might have been an allegorical and sardonic pillar itself, almost to the ceiling.  “But he believes in fair play.  Free speech.  Open field.  The rigor of the game.  He’s a sportsman in life and affairs.  That’s why he’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous?  To whom?”

“To the established order.  To the present system.  Why, son, all we Socialists ask is fair play.  Give us an even chance for labor, for the proletariat; an even show before the courts, an open forum in the newspapers, the right to organize as capital organizes, and we’ll win.  If we can’t win, we deserve to lose.  I say that men like Willis Enderby are our strongest supporters.”

“Probably he thinks his side will win, under the strict rules of the game.”

“Of course.  But if he didn’t, he’d still be for fair play, to the last inch.”

“That’s a pretty fine thing to say of a man, Pop.”

“It’s a pretty fine man,” said Edmonds.

“What does Enderby want?  What is he after?”

“For himself?  Nothing.  It’s something to be known as the ablest honest lawyer in New York.  Or, you can turn it around and say he’s the honestest able lawyer in New York.  I think, myself, you wouldn’t be far astray if you said the ablest and honestest.  No; he doesn’t want anything more than what he’s got:  his position, his money, his reputation.  Why should he?  But it’s going to be forced on him one of these days.”

“Politically?”

“Yes.  Whatever there is of leadership in the reform element here centers in him.  It’s only a question of time when he’ll have to carry the standard.”

“I’d like to be able to fall in behind him when the time comes.”

“On The Ledger?” grunted Edmonds.

“But I shan’t be on The Ledger when the time comes.  Not if I can find any other place to go.”

“Plenty of places,” affirmed Edmonds positively.

“Yes; but will they give me the chance I want?”

“Not unless you make it for yourself.  But let’s canvass ’em.  You want a morning paper.”

“Yes.  Not enough salary in the evening field.”

“Well:  you’ve thought of The Sphere first, I suppose.”

“Naturally.  I like their editorial policy.  Their news policy makes me seasick.”

“I’m not so strong for the editorials.  They’re always for reform and never for progress.”

“Ah, but that’s epigram.”

“It’s true, nevertheless.  The Sphere is always tiptoeing up to the edge of some decisive policy, and then running back in alarm.  What of The Observer?  They’re looking for new blood.”

“The Observer!  O Lord!  Preaches the eternal banalities and believes them the eternal verities.”

“Epigram, yourself,” grinned Edmonds.  “Well, The Monitor?”

“The three-card Monitor, and marked cards at that.”

“Yes; you’d have to watch the play.  The Graphic then?”

“Nothing but an ornamental ghost.  The ghost of a once handsomely kept lady.  I don’t aspire to write daily epitaphs.”

“And The Messenger I suppose you wouldn’t even call a kept lady.  Too common.  Babylonian stuff.  But The Express is respectable enough for anybody.”

“And conscious of it in every issue.  One long and pious scold, after a high-minded, bad-tempered formula of its own.”

“Then I’ll give you a motto for your Ledger.”  Edmonds puffed it out enjoyably,—­decorated with bluish and delicate whorls. “’Meliora video proboque, deleriora sequor.’”

“No; I won’t have that.  The last part will do; we do follow the worser way; but if we see the better, we don’t approve it.  We don’t even recognize it as the better.  We’re honestly convinced in our advocacy of the devil.”

“I don’t know that we’re honestly convinced of anything on The Courier, except of the desirability of keeping friendly with everybody.  But such as we are, we’d grab at you.”

“No; thanks, Pop.  You yourself are enough in the troubled-water duckling line for one old hen like The Courier.”

“Then there remains only The Patriot, friend of the Pee-pul.”

“Skimmed scum,” was Banneker’s prompt definition.  “And nothing in the soup underneath.”

Ernst, the waiter, scuttled across the floor below, and disappeared back of the L-angle a few feet away.

“Somebody’s dining there,” remarked Edmonds, “while we’ve been stripping the character off every paper in the field.”

“May it be all the editors and owners in a lump!” said Banneker.  “I’m sorry I didn’t talk louder.  I’m feeling reckless.”

“Bad frame of mind for a man seeking a job.  By the way, what are you out after, exactly?  Aiming at the editorial page, aren’t you?”

Banneker leaned over the table, his face earnest to the point of somberness.  “Pop,” he said, “you know I can write.”

“You can write like the devil,” Edmonds offered up on twin supports of vapor.

“Yes, and I can do more than that.  I can think.”

“For self, or others?” propounded the veteran.

“I take you.  I can think for myself and make it profitable to others, if I can find the chance.  Why, Pop, this editorial game is child’s play!”

“You’ve tried it?”

“Experimentally.  The opportunities are limitless.  I could make people read editorials as eagerly as they read scandal or baseball.”

“How?”

“By making them as simple and interesting as scandal or baseball.”

“Oh!  As easy as that,” observed Edmonds scornfully.  “High art, son!  Nobody’s found the way yet.  Perhaps, if—­”

He stopped, took his pipe from his lips and let his raised eyes level themselves toward the corner of the L where appeared a figure.

“Would you gentlemen mind if I took my coffee with you?” said the newcomer smoothly.

Banneker looked with questioning eyebrows toward Edmonds, who nodded.  “Come up and sit down, Mr. Marrineal,” invited Banneker, moving his chair to leave a vacancy between himself and his companion.